Artists & Performers (The Monkey Queen)

William Yong, Director/Choreographer/Scenic Designer

William Yong

William Yong received his dance and theatre training at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts while he was a singer. After graduation, he was twice the recipient of the HK Jockey Club Dance Fund scholarships. He chose to further his dance study in the U.K. at the London Contemporary Dance School. He completed his Master’s Degree in dance with distinction validated by and graduated at University of Kent in Canterbury. William’s professional dance and theatre career spans more than twenty-four years since starting with Random Dance in 1994. He has performed in 75 cities within 15 countries. He presented his first choreography for paying audiences in a production in Freiburg, Germany in 1993 and now he has created over seventy-eight dance and theatre works world-wide. In live theatre work, he played the lead role of ‘The Wolf’ in Peter and The Wolf and played ‘The Hero’ in Dinner at Seven-Thirty for Theatre Rusticle’s stage productions. He was the director, scenic designer, music and movement director for a play Comfort by Diana Tso for Red Snow Collective. He is also assisting-directing lemonTree creations’ The Blood Cycle and was the music and movement directors for productions Red Snow. William and his works received five-time Dora Mavor Moore Award nominations. For William’s theatre directorial debut Comfort in 2016, he was nominated for MyTheatre Awards’ ‘Outstanding Direction’ by My Entertainment World. This play he directed also earned a nomination for a Dora Mavor Moore Awards ‘Outstanding Composition’. William’s works were featured in many important series includes Harbourfront Centre’s World Stage in 2015, 2016 and 2017 in addition to Fall For Dance North 2017.

Diana Tso, Playwright & Performer

Diana Tso

Diana Tso is a theatre artist, playwright, storyteller, artist in education & Dora award winning actor. She’s a graduate of the University of Toronto with an honors BA in English Literature & of Ecole Internationale de Théâtre de Jacques Lecoq in France. She’s worked with diverse theatres internationally for over 18 years. Most recently she performed in Les Misérables with Theatre Smith-Gilmour and at the 2017 Stratford Festival in Bakkhai and The Komagata Maru Incident. As artistic director of Red Snow Collective her theatre vision merges east & west storytelling art forms through music, movement & text. Her plays, Red Snow (2012) and Comfort (2016) bring to light the stories of World War Two in Asia and are available at http://www.playwrightsguild.ca/playwright/diana-tso

Red Snow toured to the Shanghai International Theatre Festival in 2012.

Upcoming in 2019: storytelling in India and performing in Modern Times Stage Company’s 2019 production of The Cherry Orchard.

 

Nick Eddie, Performer 

Nick Eddie

Nicholas Eddie is a Toronto based actor and theatre maker who also dabbles in dance and music. He attended Rosedale Heights School for the Arts, where he developed a love for theatre under the guidance of Tamsin Kelsey. After high school, Nicholas spent the summer with Soulpepper’s City Youth Academy, and then started right into George Brown Theatre School. Selected theatre credits include: Heartfree (The Provok’d Wife, George Brown Season) John Proctor (The Crucible, George Brown Theatre School), Bingo (Pirate Life Productions), Thomas (The Virgin Mary, Sears Drama Festival), Timothy (Freda and Jem’s Best of the Week, Summerworks Festival).

 

 

Brandon Miguel Valdivia, Composer

Brandon Miguel Valdivia is a drummer, percussionist, flautist, improviser and composer based in Toronto. He is active in musical and interdisciplinary work that is innovative, inclusive and which enables cross cultural dialogue and understanding. His current musical projects are 2017 Polaris Prize winner Lido Pimienta, improv duo Not the Wind, Not the Flag, experimental dance music project Mas Aya, emerging Hip Hop/Dancehall band Above Top Secret and he is also active in the theatre and dance world in where he has worked on live music accompaniment and sound design with Clay and Paper Theatre, Red Snow Collective and Aluna Theatre.

 

 

Nick Storring, Composer www.nickstorring.ca

Nick Storring

Nick Storring is a Toronto-based composer and musician. Winner of the Canadian Music Centre’s 2011 Toronto Emerging Composer Award, he also placed first in the 2008 Jeux De Temps competition for electroacoustic composition. His music has been presented and performed by the Esprit Orchestra, Eve Egoyan, Quatuor Bozzini, and Beijing’s Musicacoustica Festival. An avid collaborator, he has also scored theatre productions by Litmus Theatre and MT Space, worked with celebrated choreographers such as Yvonne Ng, Deepti Gupta, and Brandy Leary, and created music for ‘ambient gaming environment’ Tentacle which appeared at the Museum of Modern Art in 2011.

 

 

Robin Fisher, Costume Designer  www.robinfisher.ca

Robin Fisher

Select designs include set and costumes for:  The Jungle Book (Manitoba Theatre for Young People), Avenue Q (Citadel Theatre), Obeah Opera (Culchaworks/Panamania), The Boy in the Moon (Great Canadian Theatre Company), Fiddler on the Roof (Western Canada Theatre), The Black Bonspiel of Wullie MacCrimmon (Globe Theatre), Hand of Bridge/Telephone (Canadian Opera Company).  Set:  Acquiesce (Factory Theatre) and Munschtime! (YPT).  Costumes: Dream a Little Dream (The Grand Theatre), Mamma, Mia! (Globe Theatre), and The Wizard of Oz (Young People’s Theatre).  Robin is the recipient of three Dora Mavor Moore awards and the 2015 Virginia and Myrtle Cooper Award for Costume Design.

 

 

Rebecca Pickerack, Lighting Designer

Rebecca PicherackRebecca is a Toronto based lighting designer. For Red Snow Collective: Comfort by Diana Tso. This autumn Rebecca lit or is about to light Noor by Erum Khan in a Mongolian yurt at the Aga Khan, Kiviuq Returns by Qaggiavuut in Iqaluit and Greenland, The Message by Jason Sherman at Tarragon Theatre, and Bed and Breakfast by Mark Crawford at the Great Canadian Theatre Company. She has received 3 Dora awards for outstanding lighting design.

 

 

Elysha Poirier, Projection Designer

Elysha PoirierElysha Poirier is a video artist and animator working in various forms of responsive media. Her methods in painting and design have been adapted to video for live performance, where she utilizes low-fi technologies and analogue techniques to combine with media rich practices. Elysha has produced several installations and engaged in live performances for dance, experimental music, and theatre such as Andrea Nann (The Whole Shebang), Evalyn Parry (Kiinalik: These Sharp Tools), Erin Brandenburg (Boblo), Annabel Soutar and Crow’s Theatre (Seeds).